Nine CCEE students from the construction engineering group attended the Construction Institute (CI) & Construction Research Council (CRC) Joint Conference 2022 in Arlington, Virginia, on March 9-12, going to sessions, presenting papers, listening to keynote speakers and networking. It was the first joint conference between the two professional construction organizations.

CCEE Professor Dr. William Rasdorf, who attended the conference, said NC State had the largest representation of current and former students at the event. His Ph.D. student Minerva Bonilla and Ph.D. candidate Yajie Liu both presented papers at the conference. 

“The conference is important for CCEE students because they were able to meet and talk to researchers working in construction throughout the U.S. and because the Construction Institute is the only construction research organization in the American Society of Civil Engineers,” Rasdorf said.

Sessions included topics such as construction education; health, safety and workforce issues; automation in construction; infrastructure systems, sustainability and resilience; contracting, project delivery and legal issues; computer applications, information modeling and simulation; and advanced technologies and data analytics. The conference also offered opportunities to network and interact with industry peers and professionals in order to gain insight on risk management and project efficiency. 

“I learned about groundbreaking research efforts related to construction engineering in the US, and around the world,” Bonilla said. “The joint conference allowed me to connect with research and construction engineers, which is a unique opportunity to network and talk about applied research and implementation efforts.”

Ph.D. student Abdullah Alsharef, who presented a paper under the supervision of his advisors Drs. Edward Jaselskis and Alex Albert, said the conference is a unique opportunity to build a network and meet people from academia and industry.

“One interesting thing I learned at the conference is that the research in the construction engineering and management domain is heavily directed toward leveraging technological advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics,” Alsharef said. “I am excited to witness how the construction industry would accept and utilize these technologies.”